Working at The Ithacan, Ithaca College's weekly student newspaper, has been a defining experience for many of our alumni. The Ithacan Alumni blog is a response to their desire to stay connected with each other and with the paper, as well as to help bring along future generations of Ithacan students.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

It’s been a good semester for Digital Journalism. We brought in two alums — Vanessa Schneider and Anna Uhls, both class of 2007 — to share their experiences with our current students. Vanessa is working for newyorktimes.com, and Anna for washingtonpost.com.Vanessa came October 7, and discussed her work with the Interactive unit at the Times. She supervises a staff of 13 comments moderators and works to develop new ways to involve readers with the Times site.[Video courtesy of Erica Hendry. The volume is low, so turn it way up.]

She visited with Wes Siler, a blogger for jalopnik.com (his title is Road Test Editor, which has to be the coolest job ever — he road-tests cars and motorcycles and then reviews them) and creator/editor of hellforleathermagazine.com, a Web site for motorcycle enthusiasts. He talked about building a career as an online journalist and blogger. They both did double-duty in the class and as guest speakers for an evening SPJ evening meeting.

Anna Uhls (right in photo below) came to the class November 18 and talked about her work as a producer and video journalist at washingtonpost.com.

Part of her job was covering both national party conventions and other campaign events for the Post. She spoke in two sections of Wenmouth Williams’ Media and Society course, Jeff Cohen’s Covering the Election and then in Digital Journalism, as well as meeting with students in an SPJ evening session.We’re fortunate to have alums like these willing to share their experience and stay involved with the program.

Monday, November 03, 2008

The Ithacan’s status as one of the best college newspapers in the country was reaffirmed this weekend when the paper was awarded the 2008 Pacemaker and Online Pacemaker awards — widely regarded as “the Pulitzer Prize of collegiate journalism — by the Associated College Press. The 2008 award is for work published during the 2007–08 academic year (Erica R. Hendry, editor in chief).

The Pacemaker recognizes excellence in college and university print publications; the Online Pacemaker is awarded to outstanding collegiate Web sites. This is the third time The Ithacan has won the Pacemaker in the past four years, and the third year in a row it has won the Online Pacemaker.

The awards were presented at the 87th annual National College Media Convention in Kansas City, Missouri. The Associated Collegiate Press is the oldest and largest national membership organization for college journalists in the country. This year's competition was judged by the staff of the St. Petersburg Times.